Mirror, Mirror
by OnWithTheButter
Summary: Mankind has, for thousands of years perhaps, made mirrors into objects of mystery. Though reflections have always been mystic and uncanny, a mirror can be somehow comforting. This is my mirror, he is. I had always feared that isolation had birthed in me an insanity, and though he himself had seemed to have snapped in loneliness, the mirror between us was a comfort.


Mankind has, for thousands of years perhaps, made mirrors into objects of mystery. When you look at it, it looks back at you with your own expression, when you speak to it, it repeats your words. A reflection seems to be identical, but with one part reversed. People have endowed it with magic, said it can foresee, and naturally.

We don't always see the mirrors all around. They're commonplace now, we don't even stop to notice the reflection in a river, much less our reflections in each other. Though reflections have always been mystic and uncanny, a mirror can be somehow comforting, if one can find it all around and bother to look.

Lonely and pushed around is the story of my life, seemingly never strong enough to put an end to it. I thought I was the only one, left out to drift in the sea until someone wanted what I had. For long centuries of my life, I was isolated and knew hardly a soul, my existence seemed to be a lesson on why to never trust. I've been overwhelmed in recent times with stepping out of a cocoon into a world that moved on, full of faces I didn't know. I found that I seemed overlooked everywhere and began to find comfort in it, because no one would care when I stumbled and failed to find my place. Finally, I learned to want to be important, to stand out, because of course I deserve it. Everyone deserves a friend, and the very least, a survivor deserves the recognition of surviving in and of itself.

But still, I believed I was an only one. Surely there could only be one frozen little child who just wanted someone to care, only one who'd lived so long on the borderline of death. I also had spent ages daydreaming of all of the possible scenarios had my life been in my favor, how all I could have impacted the world. I didn't think of a mirror.

"Why are you so skinny, Iceland?" was the first thing he said to me. I remember because it was totally unexpected and I didn't know what to do but stare at him. He repeated himself like I didn't understand. "Why are you so skinny?"

"I'm not that skinny…" It was the only thing I could come up with to acknowledge him. It was like he had sought me out specifically to ask me the question.

Let me backtrack and summarize my thoughts about Russia up to that point. I didn't know him, much like I didn't know a lot of others. A thought had crossed my mind once that it was weird and unnatural to smile like that all of the time — not even Denmark smiled that much. He seemed rather shunned, but I didn't think much of it past the original observation. I'd head that he'd gained a vast empire — and I certainly knew what it was like to be a part of an empire, especially a distant and neglected part. Truth be told, I was fine to pretend he didn't exist. I had enough trouble trying to catch up to a modern world at that point.

I didn't even have to look at him, I could feel him watching me, and I really just wanted to stand up and walk out.

"What do you like to eat?" After I had turned my back to him, all I had to go on when he attempted to make conversation was his voice. It then struck me how child-like he sounded, too innocent to realize I didn't want to talk, and both soft and enthusiastic at the same time.

I had to amuse a stranger with some semblance of answers. "Uh…" I shrugged, "it's not like I have a lot to choose from where I'm from."

"Not a lot, huh? 'Ice'land, huh? Do you have enough to eat?"

I had to turn around again to shoot him a puzzled glance. "No. Yes. I'm fine. I've survived centuries of starvation anyway."

"Have you?"

I didn't want to talk to him, so I just stood up and started to walk away. I didn't think I could avoid him, I just hoped he'd get the idea that I wasn't going to talk.

"You don't want to be my friend?" That quickly, he sounded suddenly pitiful.

I faltered, processing how to react. I didn't even bother to face him to reply. "I'm nobody's friend."

"Why not?" I hadn't expected him to even continue talking, much less to reply so quickly.

"Nobody wants a useless little boy like me for a friend."

I was going to walk away again when he stood up and came to stand right in front of me. He wasn't smiling, rather he seemed devoid of expression completely. I felt pinned to the spot. "Iceland, what happened?" His voice was lowered. I returned the blank stare, refusing to break the eye contact until he backed off. "Why did you starve? Why won't you have friends? Did they hurt you?"

This is my mirror, he is. I don't know why, but I found us to be the same. Later I learned that he had experienced the same as I had. The nights left in the snow and biting wind, alone because no one really cared enough to notice. The having to lose everything one owned just to survive on the dregs of whatever one could find in barrenness. The being ignored until someone saw something they wanted, then snatched it away like it was theirs to begin with. The destruction of everything one stands for, an erasure of one's identity. The difference, the 'one part reversed' being that he had gotten the chance to rise above it and grow to something worth anything. In that way, he seemed to have lived out my daydreams of life had it been how I wanted, and still, he wasn't happy like I had imagined. To that day, we were both alone. Despite what would be called success, he was cast off as a broken lunatic. I had always feared that isolation had birthed in me an insanity, and though he himself had seemed to have snapped in loneliness, the mirror between us was a comfort. Maybe I had snapped in another way and he sought me out because he had already seen the reflection.

I never responded to his questions that day. I didn't want to, thereby I wouldn't. I'd buried my past so that it wouldn't haunt me. No one, I thought, needed to know. After a few moments' stare down, I left, I assumed leaving him in confusion. After that, we saw each other somewhat regularly, at least annually, but never spoke. It would be years until our next conversation.

It had been a particularly bad day, and I sat slumped at the table, couldn't be bothered to move once the room cleared. I didn't even notice the footsteps coming up behind me and the man sit in the chair beside me.

"Are you okay?"

I could pretty much hear the smile in his voice without even turning my head toward him, and it irritated me. "Yeah…"

"Are you really?"

"Why do you care?" I barked without meaning to.

"…Okay, still have no friends?" He didn't wait for the answer I didn't intend to give. "You wish you had friends… It's not fair to be alone forever."

I didn't think before bursting into a rant, straightening up to face him. "'Fair' is a fantasy. It isn't _fair_ to be ignored and treated as insignificant. It isn't _fair_ to have your wishes manipulated. It isn't _fair_ to be left for dead. It isn't _fair_ to have everything you worked for snatched away from right beneath your nose and there's absolutely nothing in the world you can do about it." A pause. "And then there's…_devils_ who think only in terms of 'How can I have more?' and take and enslave lands, never minding that there are actual, living people who suddenly have a choice between the fire and the sword, with little chance of over breaking free of the tyrannical bondage unless someone with half a drop of courage stands up and makes it clear that this is all _wrong_. When half of your life is spent running from that hell and another half burning and dying in it, you stop thinking about what is and isn't 'fair'."

I have no other explanation than that he was dumbstruck. I didn't mean to lash out, but he seemed hurt.

I stared at him a bit longer, almost like a challenge to bother me again, then slumped back down, burying my face in my arms. A short moment later, a big hand came to lay between my shoulders. If I had had any inkling of energy at that point, I would have squirmed away and glared at him for touching me, but I decided to let it go and accept that maybe someone cared.

"I'm sorry, Ice."

"No, I'm sorry." My voice was muffled, but as I said, no energy. I barely took a moment to contemplate what I said next. "…Okay, I know we're the same in ways. What's your story?"

It seemed like he was stalling, an unsure silence settling for a short bit. When he did start to talk, I could tell he was trying to be cheery anyway. "I was just a poor child in a vast, desolate land." That sounded eerily familiar, something I could have opened an autobiography with. "I never understood why, but it seemed everyone wanted my place, everyone was so eager to invade and take. I was lonely, I thought they'd befriend me, but they never cared for me. In the end, it was easier to submit and accept that I'd never amount to anything. It was a couple of centuries, my existence started to fade as my identity began to dissolve." Again, I could remember my days and years of lethargy, waiting for my death. "Then came a man who decided that was over and drove away the oppressor. By then, there was no one who would care about me and everyone I had cared for were gone. We started to take back what had been ours, I thought that I could change people's minds about me. I never did. The country kept expanding, I wasn't alone anymore, but no one really cared. No, they'd all rather have left me. Time and again, everyone has turned on me and left me. Even though I'm not alone, I'm rejected and lonely."

Lonely, oh so lonely, was far too familiar. Isolation will do that to someone. Even once I was past being isolated, I was too afraid of rejection. And here he was, after countless rejections, hoping someone, me, wouldn't push him away. How much courage he must have had to had to keep on trying.

It was kind of funny that we never met formally, and by that I mean there were no introductions, no set ordinary pattern of social interaction that began a connection between us. For decades, it was just a wave-and-smile acquaintanceship, few words. But understanding. Understanding that a reflection can make you stronger. And we definitely reflected each other, a known fact to both of us. Neither of us are a drifting, sole entity, an only one.

As years rolled by, we unspokenly grew closer. There was no reason for anyone else to care for why we became friends, and no need to even think of it between us. We didn't have to explain ourselves to each other, and so when either needed to just be, we somehow found each other. Sometimes we barely even spoke, we just sat together, often over drinks, finding comfort in that we could do exactly that.

"Why is your house so big?"

I had treated that as a rhetorical question, even if it wasn't meant as such. It is a rare day for someone I know to visit, aside from locals, and if I had to stress over a guest, I guess I should be content that said guest was someone I was most comfortable with. I had been to his home a few times, offered as a place to sleep and eat. It had felt empty, built for far more than one man. After his first words upon seeing my own home, I started to wonder if loneliness makes one try to make space for others, in hop that loneliness isn't forever.

"Be free to eat whatever you want, and do make yourself comfortable."

He retrieved I-didn't-bother-to-see-what from the kitchen, and settled in a chair across from me. There wasn't a phony need to make polite conversation. He played with a pen for several minutes, before deciding he had something worth saying. "You know we kinda look alike, right?"

"Yeah…"

"It's weird," he grinned, "and kinda funny."

I briefly smiled to acknowledge his words, and he went back to doodling on the back of his hand.

"Thanks…for being a friend."

"And thanks, for caring about me just for me."

* * *

**A/N: Okay, since I didn't write it too detailed, you all should look out for ShrapnelGirl's ( u/2050928/) upcoming fic that goes in-depth into Russian-Icelandic relations! Go go go go (she should have the first chapter up real soon)**

**Also you should know that while I have my own ideas of what timeframes this takes place in, you should read it however you want within the mid- to late-twentieth century.**

**P.S. You don't know me if you don't know that I love a clueless!Ice.**


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